The House of Asterion

by InkStone

Rating: teen
Tags: Horror, Twilight Sparkle, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Dark, Thriller
Length: 2772

Twilight never should have entered that House.

"We have diverse curious Clocks; And other like Motions of Return....
We have also House of Deceits of the Senses, where we represent all manner of Feats of Juggling, False Apparitions, Impostures, and Illusions...
Those are (my sonne) the Riches of Salomon's House

-Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis, ed. Rawley, pp. 41-42

"Here shall be found a house like none other on the face of the Earth"
-Jorge Luis Borges, The House of Asterion

Published 2024-10-26 22:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2024-10-26 22:00:00 UTC

The House Always Wins

Dear Princess Celestia,

I should have listened.

I never listen

I remember when I was a filly and you used to admonish me for letting my curiosity get the better of me. You used to say that the phrase 'curiosity killed the cat' must have been coined by some oracle who caught a glimpse of me in their visions because I had an uncanny ability to stick my nose into things. Even when you told me not to, even when everyone around me told me it was a bad idea, I always wanted to know everything.

Now I know nothing. I can't even remember your face.

I don't know if you'll receive this letter. As far as I know, nothing can escape the House. Nothing. No amount of magic, no complex spell matrix or arcane algorithm, can subvert whatever strange power holds sway over this place. Every attempt to teleport myself from here, every attempt to send out a message, has failed spectacularly no matter how much mana I've poured into it. It's likely that this letter will just end up somewhere else in the House, waiting to be rediscovered by me, another part of this damned House's long campaign to destroy my mind.

It's succeeding.

Maybe, by some miracle of Harmony, this letter will slip through a crack in the House's defenses, will find its way to you, and you'll read it and know that I'm still alive. If that happens, I ask but one thing of you.

Don't send anyone after me. I'm already gone. Nopony else needs to be dragged down with me.

Are you even still alive? How long has it been?

Maybe I should start from the beginning so that you can understand how I got here. So you can understand what I've been through.

I don't think I can put it into words.

Where do I

What do I

Can I even remember?

You sent me to Minos on a diplomatic mission, my goal being to foster closer relationships with the Minotaurs. The City-States of Cretia were producing pottery and metalwork that had become fashionable among the Equestrian elite, and there was a lot of pressure from the House of Lords and Ladies for the Crown to make an official trip around the Peloponyssian peninsula so that the goods would keep flowing directly into their curio cabinets. I remember how excited I was to take on the task: not only was it my first diplomatic duty as a Princess of Equestria, but it was also my first time visiting the homeland of the Minotaurs, a land so rich in history and tradition. Harmony, I took so many ancient, dusty tomes and empty notepads with me that I thought Spike would break his back.

I hope he's alright. I don't know what happened to him.

I was welcomed into Minos with great celebration and fanfare. My arrival triggered a festival that lasted three entire days, long days of feasting, drinking, and dancing on beautiful mosaic floors. It was a party that gave Pinkie Pie a run for her bits, and by the end of those three days, the streets were so full of colorful strips of confetti, the vomit of drunken revelers, and spilled wine that another entire day was spent on the cleanup... at least, after everyone got over their hangovers.

This isn't to say that I spent those three days idly. My companion during that time was Taurus, the Prince of Minos, who led me during those festivities and ensured I didn't commit any social gaffes. Those nights of drink-addled minds and loosened tongues were probably more beneficial to future trade than any official negotiation.

It was one of those nights, sitting on the terrace of a house, drinking exquisite wine and eating perfectly ripened grapes, feeling the cool night air tousle my mane, that I first learned about the House.

On my first day in Minos, I noticed an opulent villa perched on top of a hill, overlooking the city like a watchful sentinel. Even from so far away, it was beautiful. Murals and mosaics decorated the outside walls, depicting minotaurs dancing and celebrating just as we were; high columns rose all around the structure, holding roofs covered in reliefs depicting scenes from mythology; green peeked over stone walls, teasing the lush gardens trapped inside. Yet, despite how grand and beautiful the villa was, the city acted as though it didn't exist. No one ever went near it, and if their eyes fell upon it, even for a second, they would frown and immediately look away. I figured that the villa was owned by an unpopular neighbor, a rich old miser who had drawn the ire of the populace by being stingy and rude. Maybe there was a friendship issue to solve!

I wish I had left it at that.

On that cool night on the terrace, I asked Taurus about the House, bringing it up with a laugh. Taurus immediately sobered up and sat straight in his seat, his face deadly serious. He told me not to ask about the House, that it was taboo, that to even mention it was to invite its evil. He frightened me in that moment; Taurus was always a laid-back, relaxed individual, and so to see him acting like this shook me to my core. But I had to know more.

He sighed and explained that no one knew where the House had come from. It simply was, had always been, and always would be. In the old days of Minos, they would send the most vile of criminals in there as punishment, but that practice had fallen out of favor when it was deemed too cruel a fate. Confused, I asked him why being confined to an opulent villa was a cruel fate.

The words he spoke will stay with me forever. No matter how long I wander through these endless corridors, long after my body fades into dust - if it even can - they will echo in my ears and haunt me.

'The House of Asterion is a web that even the spider cannot escape.'

Why didn't I listen?

We went to bed soon after that, but the House of Asterion still weighed on my mind, and I knew at that moment that I would investigate it before I left Minos. I thought about it intermittently over the next few days, among the partying and the cleanup and the eventual state functions that followed, but I finally found myself with a few hours of free time the day before we were set to leave Minos, and so I trudged up the hill, using my magic to hide the dust trail behind me, and found myself at the entrance to the House.

The entryway was a baroque affair: elaborate columns decorated with patterns of swirling gold and silver; two statues of minotaurs, a bull and a cow, carved from marble with such skill that they looked like flesh and blood; and a front door decorated with rubies and sapphires, emeralds and lapis-lazuli. As I stepped closer, examining the intricate craftsmanship of the door, I noticed a saying carved into the wood of the threshold.

The Truth In Falsehood and The Falsehood In Truth

I raised an eyebrow at that. It seemed like sophistry to me, something the Canterlot Philosophical Society would mull over for years, discussing with the accompaniment of expensive tea and pastries bought from the well-known bakeries. After scribbling it into a notepad for later reference, I entered the House of Asterion and, in doing so, made my last mistake.

There were no signs of anything wrong. No chill traveling down my spine, no crackle of energy, nothing that indicated the self-imposed hell that I stepped into. Only the cool, salty wind of the sea brushing across my back.

I trotted through cavernous ballrooms, galleries of intricate stained glass that cast rainbow light on the perfectly polished crystal floors, and arcades that looked out on tropical gardens growing every variety of plant you could imagine, and a few that I'm sure do not exist anywhere else in the world, only here, trapped in this House.

I spent an hour roaming the rooms of the House until I decided to make my way back to the entrance. I believe at this point, my subconscious was picking up on the first strange aspect of the House: its geometry. I hadn't thought about it, but based on the apparent dimensions of the House from the outside, it would have been impossible for it to contain all the rooms I had explored. As this chilling fact pricked its way up my spine, something even more terrifying occurred to me.

I was staring into the room that I had just exited. The same marble floors, the same statues nestled in alcoves along the sides, the same stained glass windows depicting scenes of heroes and monsters. I squinted my eyes, staring across the expanse of room that now seemed impossibly long, and took a sharp breath of air when I realized that, standing on the opposite threshold, facing away from me, was a perfectly identical alicorn mare, cutie mark and all. I looked behind me, seeing another identical alicorn mare across the room looking over her shoulder as I was.

I slammed the door behind me. The sound echoed for the next 10 minutes as I sat there, gasping for air that wouldn't fill my uncooperative lungs. When my breathing stabilized but my mind had not, I made a mad dash for the opposite door, desperate to figure out what was going on. But no matter how fast I galloped, I could not make it to the door; it always seemed to be half a room away.

I'm reminded of a thought experiment proposed by an old Minotauran philosopher. If one were to challenge a tortoise to a footrace, giving the tortoise a head-start with the understanding that it is a naturally slower creature, you could never truly catch up to the tortoise because you would first have to cross half the distance it had already covered, then half of the distance it had crossed in the meantime, then half of that, infinitely regressing until one comes to the conclusion that the ability to infinitely divide parts makes motion impossible. Of course, our modern understanding of calculus and physics tells us that this is nonsense, an ancient's misunderstanding of the fundamental laws of the universe, but I was living in the reality of this impossibility.

I fainted from exertion, passing out in the middle of the floor. I don't know how long I was unconscious, one second or one thousand years, I don't know, time is meaningless here. All of Equestria could have long passed in that moment and I would be none the wiser. All I know is that I woke up and the room was not the one I had fainted in.

I was now in a long hallway decorated with portraits of Saddle Arabian sheiks, dressed in fine Eastern silks and colored beads, with the other side of the passage opened to an endless desert painted blue as the ocean by the pale light of the moon hanging in the sky. The hallway curved slightly in each direction, the end not visible from where I stood, but I would quickly learn that that was irrelevant because the hallway had no end, went on infinitely stretching into that endless night.

I tried my best to keep track of time in that space, but it was a fruitless effort; the moon never set in that strange, alien world, eternally hanging in the sky like a cosmic eye staring down at me. The best I could estimate, I spent months in that place, possibly years, walking down an endless hallway whose portraits were my only company.

Some days I wish I could go back to that hallway. It was hauntingly beautiful in an ethereal way and a far better locale than some I have been dumped in.

I don't have the ink to describe all the torments that I've had to undergo in this House. Every time I become privy to the House's tricks, it does something new to spear the last bits of my sanity like a pony trying to get the last scraps of food on a plate. If I try to shore up my mind against its constant siege, it discovers the crack in the walls and pries them apart until I am naked and vulnerable in front of it once again. The House is alive, and it is sadistic.

I have dealt with geometries that defy all sense and logic; I have walked into rooms larger than some countries; I have gazed upon deserts, jungles, oceans, and mountains from the windows spawned by the House; I have experienced one hundred years in a few seconds and a few seconds in one hundred years; I have seen myself so many times, mirror images, perhaps me's from an alternate universe, though we have never managed to communicate. I have taken all the punishments of the House and survived, even if all I desire is an end to these torments.

I thought there was nothing else the House could do.

She was wrong.

I heard your voice last night, Princess. Clear as a bell, a sweet song from the past painfully dragged into the present. I almost fell for it, almost chased after you, tears of joy dripping down my face. But then I knew.

Oh?

The House would never let this happen. It's too twisted, too sadistic, to even allow its victims an iota of hope. Even if you were trapped in this labyrinth with me, it would never let us approach closely enough for me to hear you. Even if it were to tear that hope away from me, keeping us apart for the rest of eternity after that one, single encounter, it could not stand to give me even that little bit of hope, because that is antithetical to the House.

You don't understand.

But I do understand.

What?

I understand you. You're the opposite of hope. You're what's left when someone loses everything and has nothing else to give. That's why you're an infinite, changing entity; you are literally nothing, the yawning void made of all the empty hearts in the world. But that's what limits you!

I am unlimited.

But you aren't! You're limited in the fact that you can only do the negative, because that's all you are! Even with the future promise of more negative emotions, you can't produce anything positive. That's the mistake you made, the one error in your plan; you should have never mimicked her voice.

What do you gain from this knowledge? No matter what you do, you will never escape the House.

You're right. I'll never escape this House, no matter how long I roam these halls. This House is an endless spiral and I'll forever twist down it until you become bored, if you can become bored.

At least, that's what would happen.

Stop talking nonsense, pony!

Haven't you felt it? The crackle of energy, a power anathema to what you are? As soon as I realized your nature, when I finally knew what you were at the core, I began building this spell, slowly gathering the mana I needed to ensure my victory.

No spell can defeat me!

Don't think of it as a spell. Think of it as... an infusion of positivity.

You can't escape!

I'm not trying to.

Princess, I don't know if you'll receive this letter. Maybe it will burn along with me, maybe it will end up in one of the ruined rooms of the House and become another piece of flotsam in the stream of time, or maybe you died a long time ago. I just want you to let my friends and family know that I love them and that through all the torments of the House, they were my guiding light.

Love,
Twilight Sparkle
Your Daughter

One hour after Twilight Sparkle entered the House of Asterion, an explosion of magical energy burst the walls of the House. With a rumble, the hill that it sat upon slid into the sea, burying the House below the waves of the sea. Citizens of Minos would swear that they saw orbs of golden light spiraling up from the ocean, laughing and spinning in joy as they rose into the sky, free from the House that sunk silently below the sea on that warm summer day.